Stars Keep Burning
by 16pennies
Summary: Her summon for the lights grew dry on her tongue as she saw Lenara tentatively step into the shadows of her bedroom, silhouette barely illuminated by the starlight. And though the body was different, Jadzia would have known it was her former wife even if she couldn't see a thing.


Jadzia frowned, clenched her eyelids as though that would help pull her deeper into sleep, make the noise go away…

No.

There it was again, that chime which must have been engineered to be as obnoxious to humanoid ears as they could possibly manage—

"Come in," she called and sat up in her bed before her fatigue could override her sense of duty. Her neck seized and she rubbed it with a sigh, felt the stress which had taken up residence in the muscle fibres there. This wasn't what was supposed to happen; she had promised everyone, most of all herself that she could handle it but oh, she had never thought that it would be like _this_ —

The hiss of the door and Jadzia heard the footsteps falter as they were admitted to an empty room.

"In here," she called again, protocol be damned because if someone was willing to demand entrance to her quarters in the middle of the night, they could damn well deal with her being in her pyjamas.

Her summon for the lights grew dry on her tongue as she saw Lenara tentatively step into the shadows of her bedroom, silhouette barely illuminated by the starlight. And though the body was different, Jadzia would have known it was her former wife even if she couldn't see a thing.

"Hey."

"Hi." A different voice, richer than the one she remembered, and yet still Jadzia couldn't help the swell of tender emotion it provoked. "I'm sorry I woke you. I actually tried to override the locking program, but Cardassian-Federation technology isn't exactly my speciality." Her attempt at a laugh stretched across a beat of silence. "I also didn't feel like having to explain to your security force why I was trying to break into your quarters."

The smile on her lips felt absurdly warm, but Jadzia couldn't help it, _can't help any of this…_

"It's alright. And I'm very glad you're not in a holding cell." She nodded to the end of her bed. "Would you like to sit?"

Lenara did, perching herself on the edge of the mattress. Her hands found each other in her lap and twisted into shadowed figures which Jadzia found fascinating. "I shouldn't be here."

"No, you shouldn't." Tilting her head a little to the side, Jadzia traced the way the spacelight outlined Lenara's elegant profile. "But here you are."

The sigh Lenara released could have broken an airlock. "But here I am," she agreed. The darkness made it easier for these sort of confessions, Jadzia thought. Somehow truth wasn't as dangerous when you couldn't see it. She didn't call for the lights.

"I... we can't go on like this, can we?"

"What do you propose?"

"We have to talk about it."

"We tried talking earlier," Jadzia chuckled. "In case you forgot, I'm not sure how much it helped."

Lenara's eyes closed and she shook her head in an expression Jadzia took for bemused exasperation. That warm feeling blossomed, deeper this time, and Jadzia almost wished she could bring herself to care. She smiled, couldn't stop the smiling, and made to move nearer—

"Ow!"

"What's wrong?"

"My neck. I think I slept on it wrong. Ah…" Grimacing, Jadzia probed at the firm muscle with her fingers, trying to trigger relief and not a little annoyed by the interruption. After decades of Curzon's old age, it was easy to forget that youthful bodies were not infallible.

"Are you—? Never mind; here, let me," and Jadzia found herself being gently but firmly herded out from her bedsheets and sat in the middle of her bed, back to Lenara who knelt behind her and began to gently press against the protesting ligaments around Jadzia's shoulder. "Stop holding your breath," she scolded, and Jadzia's respiration resumed in fits and starts as Lenara's fingertips applied increasing pressure, unravelling the knots along familiar pathways.

"Thank you."

Lenara hummed. "You were always doing things like this to yourself, hunched over that damn helm…"

"Maybe I only did it— _ah_ —because I knew you were waiting at home, ready to fix me." Jadzia's grin scorched the darkness.

"Nilani always did pamper you too much for your own good."

Jadzia's hand came up and gently halted Lenara's fingers, holding them gently among her own. "Then it's time the favour was returned, don't you think?"

"That's very gallant of you, but I don't think being a scientist can cause the same degree of injury being a test pilot does."

"Don't be ridiculous," Jadzia scolded as she carefully turned to face Lenara behind her. "All that researching…" Her hand came up, cradled Lenara's jaw against her palm, fingers reaching around to reach where her long hair was still immaculately twisted. "…spending nights hunched over PADDs until morning…" She let her fingertips briefly flutter along the side of Lenara's throat, where this hypothetical pain might be, and wished she could see exactly what emotion was in her eyes, because surely, _surely_ she must know that all this was magnificently inevitable… "I think you've earned some relief, don't you?"

Lenara chuckled, but Jadzia didn't miss the way she pressed her head against Jadzia's hand, or the sigh that came when her fingers began to dislodge the clips and pins securing her hair.

"Dax…" That name, so perfectly encapsulating both past and present, and Jadzia's heart swelled with the knowledge that the battle was won.

"Yes?"

Wriggling her fingers just the slightest bit, Jadzia encouraged some of the hairpins to loosen. As the strands began to fall undone, Lenara leaned deeper into her hand and the pressure of it woke all the nerve endings in Jadzia's body; she thought she might have even felt the symbiont squirm, overwhelmed by the onslaught of old feelings made new in this body.

"How are we supposed to forget this? Who decided that it's even possible for us not to want this?"

"I don't know," answered Jadzia, mumbling because Lenara's lips were suddenly so incredibly near. "But never in any lifetime have I been so ready to prove someone wrong."

* * *

 **A/N:** Rewatched _Rejoined_ and this happened. Title is a line from the musical _Bridges of Madison County_.


End file.
